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Our speaker is Dr. Andrew Doan. So glad to have him here with us. His credentials list
is so long and I will do the best I can. If I miss anything, go ahead Andrew and just
pick up where I left off. Dr. Andrew Doan received his MD and PhD from Johns Hopkins
University. And he is part of the National Institutes of Health doctors. So these are
medical scientists that are about 200 every year chosen from 16000 to get paid to do research
and go to school. That sounds great until you hear that you are in school for however
so many schools. These doctors go through this program for the purpose of doing research
and then sharing at public schools and the public. He then pursued ophthalmology training
to compliment his neuroscience background. He has been doing research for dozens of years
on these topics. And it is so great that I was able to talk to him and his family to
just see how things in the medical field relate to the things we talk about. We should take
what we learn and share it with the world.
Please pray with me. Pray for Andrew and pray for our time together today. Then we will
get started.
God, thank you. I start praying, God, it is so great to be in your presence and to see
what you are doing in this city and West LA. God, thank you so much. Thank you for bringing
all these people here on a Sunday night to learn more about you. Thank you for bringing
this family here to West LA who has a heart for you and that want to spread the word of
God for you. Please help us learn more about you. I pray that we use this time for us to
learn whatever you have for us to learn about you and that every each one of us are aware
of where are are tonight and what we need to do, so that we can take something we hear
tonight and impact our lives and make an impact on other people's life so that we can show
your love. Thank you so much for bringing Dr. Andrew Doan here to us and I pray for
him and that you speak through him. In Jesus Christ's name we pray, Amen.
We do Q&A at the end, so keep your questions to the end. We will do a live Q&A and throughout
the service you may text in your questions.
You know it is so great to be here tonight because I did a fellowship in eye pathology
at the Jules Stein Eye Institute which is right down the road so I was here in 2006.
And it is such a Blessing to see so many students fired up for the LORD. Wow! I thought I was
going to have a bunch of atheists and agnostics to argue.
My background is that I grew up in a Buddhist family. I left South Vietnam in 1975 during
the fall of Saigon. So I came here without knowing Christ and really God. I grew up most
of my life as an atheist. I came to the LORD in about my thirties. But being a scientist,
I approach "religion" and God very scientifically. It took me many years looking at the numbers
and crunching the numbers related to God.
The amazing thing as an eye pathologist, I see people who are dying from eye cancers.
People get like melanoma, basal cell carcinomas, and sebaceous cell carcinomas of the eye lid.
And they are in my chair without hope and without ability to really carry on their lives
and function. So what I found was that I had to research more into the afterlife. This
is real. For my patients, the only thing that will help them was not a pill and not more
medication and not more chemo because some of these cancers have spread so far and that
they they had no hope. The only hope they have is that there is Heaven and that there
is something after life.
My disclaimer is that I am an employee of the US Navy so I have to have a standard disclaimer
that I am part of the Department of Defense. If I say things that offend our government
that it actually represents me and not that of our President.
So who has read this book, "Heaven is for Real"? It is a New York Time's Best Seller.
This is an awesome book. This is fascinating. So this little boy named Colton was literally
in his near death because he actually suffered from a ruptured appendix. Who has had appendicitis?
Okay I had appendicitis back in 2007. It's excruciating pain in the lower right quadrant.
I was bellied over. The thing was that I was trying to be stoic and I actually drove all
the way home, which was an half-hour commute and took a shower and drove back to the hospital.
My wife was about to kill me. And this literally is a condition that can lead to death because
the appendix is a vestigial organ that when it ruptures, will actually cause sepsis. Meaning
that it spreads bacteria from a ruptured bowel. This kid had a mis-diagnosis and he was septic
for about a week. You can imagine how bloated, bacteria growing in his belly. So they rushed
him to the hospital and he had surgery. It is amazing that during the time he had surgery,
he had an out of body experience. I will go through this later in the talk. And the he
goes to heaven and he mets GOD and he comes back and tells his story to his father. But
the amazing thing is that they search for photos of what Jesus looks like, his dad sat
down and looked through literally hundreds and hundreds of paintings and hundreds of
portraits of Christ. And he ended up identifying without a questionable doubt, he said "That
is the picture! That is the picture!" The picture was titled the "Prince of Peace".
The amazing thing is that the picture is in the book, but if you do the background research
on this photo, it was painted by a little girl at the age of eight, in an atheist family
who never knew Jesus, and who claimed she was visited by God ever since the age of four
and that is who taught her to paint. As you can see her picture down here and see how
small she is compared to the her painting.
She actually visited Heaven at the age of twelve, and this is her portrait of what Heaven
is like. She was frustrated because the colors were so vivid. Notice the painting, which
I will talk about later, that the colors are so vibrant and people describe that the colors
are warm and that there are so many colors that we don't realize exist.
So when I saw that I was like "Wow that's amazing!" There are two children that had
separate experiences. One child had visions that she painted and another one actually
visited to Heaven.
What is the near-death experience? When I was about twelve years old, I was swimming
laps under water. I was pushing myself too much and this is why the Navy prohibits people
from holding their breath and trying to do laps underwater, so shallow water blackout
is a dangerous thing. So blacked out and there was another man who jumped in the pool and
got me when I bellied up after my fifth lap under water. And the only thing I recall is
that when I blacked out there was one person in the swimming pool and when I was revived
there were fifty people, a fire trunk and ambulance. So I spoke with the women who was
a pediatric ICU nurse that revived me, she said I that pretty much I was gone. I was
blue and seizing and I was out for at least fifteen minutes. The rule is that you basically
can survive 3 days without water, 30 days without food, and 3 minutes without oxygen.
So your brain literally dies after 3 minutes if there is no blood flow to the brain. That's
why stroke patients are a medical emergency. But the amazing thing about that time when
I was out when I had a the near-death experience, even though I was out for 15 minutes, it seemed
like hours and hours and hours, and almost it seemed like all night long. And that's
the fascinating thing is that the brain slows down so that things seems, I do I describe
it, that things seem more lengthy so 15 minutes could feel like days during that near-death
experience state. So that is why you see when you read these near-death accounts that patients
describe they have so much time and they are still lucid with experiences.
So here is a book written by Dr. Jeffrey Long. This is an interview with O'Reilly.
So Dr. Long works with patients who have cancer. He is a radiation oncologist and he was curious
about patients who had near-death experiences. He interviewed 1300 patients who had near-death
experiences.
So what does the research show?
We have over 40 research papers published in the peer-reviewed research literature on
near-death experiences.This is a scientific phenomena and this is something we cannot
deny.
And what's amazing about this is that patients who have these experiences can be in a coma
where there is no brain activity or even flat-line on the EKG so their heart is not even functioning.
And keep in the mind that I said you only 3 minutes before your brain is clinically
dead, so really in a standard CPR and standard resuscitation, what do you guys think is the
average time the medical profession spends trying to resuscitate someone? 10 minutes,
15 minutes, 30 minutes? About 30 minutes. We spend 30 minutes trying to revive someone
before we declare that the person is clinically dead.
These patients will have outer-body experiences. So when they come out, when they are revived,
they actually can recount who was in the room, the doctors that made errors, and the accounts
that I have read, the patients knew exactly the error that the doctors made so they were
kind of shocked that the patients could actually say "yea you made that clinical error". A
the doctors would be baffled by it by that recounting of that episodes by the patient.
Some patients can even travel and see people in other rooms.
Some people will see deceased individuals, relatives, and even unknown ones. I will describe
what that means later.
And then there is a common theme through near-death experiences that people travel through a tunnel
and that there are beings of light. They describe the light as warm and loving and accepting.
Here is the first case study. This is the boy Colton from "Heaven is For Real". LIke I said, this little boy had a near-death
in the operating room from a ruptured appendix. When he shared his experiences they were corroborated
with other people. For example, he saw his dad praying for him and he knew exactly where his dad was. He also
met his miscarried sister and she was in Heaven. And so that's something his parents did not
share with Colton. When he came back, he was confident and said he met my sister, and knew
her name, and that was a weird piece of knowledge that that little boy would have. Then Colton
met his grandfather that he never met and he met his grandfather as a young man in Heaven.
And so when they reviewed old family photos without telling Colton who the grandfather
was, he was able to point out who his grandfather was like how he was able to identified Jesus
in the painting. He also accurately described seeing family members like I describe before.
So any one of these accounts alone would be strange and odd, but when you put them all
together and there were many many things that were corroborated.
So this case involves a cancer patient undergoing surgery. And this patient was color blind.
So if you know anything about the visual cortex that if the visual cortex never develops what
color are or even sight, it's hard for people to describe what they are seeing because your
brain doesn't develop those senses. So this patient had a near-death experience and was
able to describe vivid colors and visually experiences that contained color even though
he has never had any perception of color in his life. Another patient had a near-death
experience and she was blind from birth and in the accident, she had an outer-body experience
that she could actually see. After her revival she was able to describe what she saw even
though she is blind since birth.
And then he also met a loving man in Heaven who was later identified in a photography
as being born from an extramarital affair. This guy was basically very nice to him, very
warm to him, and loving. And during his time with his mother when she was dying ten years
later, she revealed to him that she had an extramarital affair and that your father is
not who you really think he is and she showed him a picture of that man and that was the
man he met during his near-death experience.
And this gentleman also described that he experienced a dark black vacuum at high speeds
and at the end he experiences a warm light.
So what do other case studies show?
From my experiences talking to patients. They all describe that during near-death that there
is a sense of peace and understanding and a sense of where they are going. This is amazing.
There is a patient who is fearful of death and he was in hospice and he would be holding
on to this railing and would let go. So when they called the hospice nurse, the hospice
nurse coached the patient and said don't worry, let go, go to the tunnel, go to the light,
and so this gentleman after literally of hours and hours holding this railing, he was finally
coached to have enough confidence to let go and passed literally just 30 minutes to an
hour later.
The hospice nurse uses this method to coach people to let go.
These patients, again, will tell of vivid colors of flowers. This is similar to what
Akiane painted.
Like I mentioned before, blind patients who never developed sight in the visual cortex
describe vivid colors and vivid experiences.
So really the question I through out to you all, is that I am hear to strengthen your
faith, right, so that we all can walk in confidence, authority and love. So the question, regardless
of our beliefs, regardless of our faiths, whether you are Hindu, Buddist, religious,
not religious, atheist, we have an outer-body experience so that we are spiritual beings
living in a human condition, so the question is it's like gravity, even though you can't
see it, it's there, so if you jump we're going to go splat. So the question is that which
theology do we put all our chips on? Which theology do we put all our faith in? For me,
I would put my faith all on Christ, who I have faith He was here, He was resurrected,
He is God, and He witnessed to thousands of people after his resurrection.
So how do we know that God loves us? So let's look at the passage in John 3:16-18. Most
people know the John 3:16 passage:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in
him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world
to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not
condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed
in the name of God's one and only Son.
How do you know that God is a loving God like Dr. Long stated?
In 2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is
patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
We have a loving God. He instructed for all to love their enemies. He does not have desire
for anyone to perish. He is going to wait until the very end like the thief on the cross.
That is why I tell people that we don't need to convince people that Christ is the way.
We need to walk in our daily lives, so that we walk with Authority, with Confidence, and
in Love. So that we are the lamp for the Holy Spirit and show who Christ is by who we are.
A hopefully we have people who plant the seeds, so that even for those who reject the Gospel
or cannot even accept God, that there is hope until the last neural impulse fires... so
that there is hope that they'll accept Christ at the end.
So really I say that when Oprah says there are many paths to Heaven, I say "yea" that
there are many paths to Heaven but Jesus is the way. So all paths lead to Christ as being
the one who guide us to the Father.
My caution is that, yes there is a loving God, there is a near-death experience, but
we have to be careful who we worship because Satan is described as being an angel of light
in 2 Corinthians 11:14.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
In John 8:44, "He is a liar and father of lies."
He is out to destroy and he is out to deceive. Now let's role play this is out if we were
Satan and banned from Heaven and took one third of the angels with you, what's your
goal? How do you become of your own dominion? Through lies and deception, he is trying to
get as many souls as possible so he can rule over them.
We know that in John 8:12, Jesus describes Himself as the light of the world. So we have
to be very careful because these spiritual beings and God Himself are creatures of light.
Satan himself can deceive you, so that is why Jesus says you have to profess his name
with your tongue.
In summary, based on research patients have near-death experiences that are similar across
the board, regardless of faith, regardless of their religion.
And so, the question I throw out at you all, and during this Q&A, which theology do you
place all your faith in to assure your entry to Heaven.
You may email me with questions and I invite you to LIKE my Facebook Page.
We will open up the floor to questions.
We are starting the live Q&A. But it is not too late if you guys want to text in questions,
that information is up there on the screen.
If you want to ask live questions, go ahead and raise your hand.
Question: Based on your near-death experience, have you found your experience to be contradictory
to Biblical doctrine or to other near-death experiences?
Dr. Doan: No, not at all. Clearly, like Dr. Long said that people with near-death experiences
will experience parts or some of the experiences. For me, I was trapped in a tunnel, and I know
there is a light at the end. But I was like dreaming, and it was really a strange experience
because I was able to experience lots of key moments in my life during the time I was in
that state. I was in a perpetual tunnel, and what happened was I was pulled out of the
tunnel and when I woke up, I was completely refreshed and there were a ton of people around
Question: So my question is do you think there is a second chance for people in the after-life.
Basically, is there an option to choose Jesus after death or is life the only option we
have to place our faith in Christ.
Dr. Doan: These near-death experiences are not death, because you're still alive. That's
why it's called near-death and so I believe that person who seeks God's heart, God with
either supernaturally appear to them. I have seen patients experienced this. One of my
patients had a husband who was an atheist and she was a devote Christian, and what she
described to me was that her atheist husband never went to church with her so he didn't
Gospel music or anything. But two weeks before his death, he said that Jesus appeared to
him and that he had this vivid dream and he had this experience with Christ. The amazing
thing is that at the end of his life, he was singing church music and church hymns around
the house. He was so happy and so comfortable about where he was going to go. So what I
tell people is that whether people will accept Christ or not, it's really up to God, so God
decide when to present Himself to the person, or perhaps sit you next to a Christian in
the class, or bring a Christian ministry overseas to your town... it's going to happen to people
accept Christ or not. He can appear anytime because He is God.
Question: If people from all faiths experienced the same afterlife, how can we know Christianity
is the only way?
Dr. Doan: That's a good question. I thought about this question for a long time. Lee Strobel
wrote a book "A Case for Christ". Anyone read that book? He goes into the arguments about
the accuracy of the Bible and Pastor Andrew Pitts does a better job a theologian than
me so he can go through how accurate the Bible is, the resurrection of Christ, His death,
and His history. Jesus Christ is the only prophet who walked the earth who claimed that
He is God and actually resurrected and witnessed to his apostles. Remember that during the
time that he was resurrected, the apostles all betrayed Him. He died alone. He was not
a popular. Jesus was not popular towards the end of His ministry. At one time, after miracles
of feeding people with bread and fish, He had five thousand followers and they all came
to him and said "can you teach me more". My teaching is hard and they said, no we really
want to learn. So he said you have to drink my blood and eat my flesh. They all scattered.
The only ones remained were the twelve apostles. But at the time of his crucification, they
all scattered. But when they saw the resurrection, they actually the wounds in His hands, and
was able to put their fingers through the wound, something changed. Like Akiane who
saw Heaven and saw Christ and all the images she saw, she is certain, the apostles saw
the miracle of the resurrection, so all the apostles were willing die for their faith.
But Christ did not just appear to 12 people, He appeared to thousands of people while he
walked the earth for 40 days. So that is why we know the word of God is the Bible and what
Jesus claims to be true. My faith holds true because He is the one who died, resurrected
Question: has their any research on brain scans during the near-death experiences?
Dr. Doan: That's a good question. No there are not because it's hard to do with functional
MRI scans. You know the only way to do the study is to rush patients during near-death
experiences to the MRI scan and see what they're experiencing. But I will tell you that there
are people who have spiritual awakening that are Christians, their brains, especially in
their frontal lobes, actually turn off. What's amazing about this is that your frontal lobe
is what makes you human that allows you to accept God and determine what is right or
wrong.. immorality... your frontal lobe basically gives your personality. But when we are submitted
to God, fMRI scans show that your frontal lobe turns off, but you need your frontal
lobe to make that decision. So when you look at the pruning of the brain, which occurs
from the back to the front, matures completely by age 25 and the brain is solidified so that
it's harder for people to make that decision. This is why you see the average Christian
accepting Jesu before age 25.
Question: Keep in mind that I know nothing about science at all. Are there similarities
between dreaming and near-death experiences?
Dr. Doan: During dreaming your brain is super-active. Did you know that your brain burns more calories
while you sleep than watching TV? So when you sleep you brain is super-active. Keep
that in mind, that's when you form your memories and form your experiences. There is something
called the Tetris Effect that when you watch a movie or play a video game before you sleep,
you dream about that. So, it's best to study before you sleep than to play Candy Crush.
So when you dream your brain is very active, but during many of these near-death experiences
the brain is not active. A neuro-surgeon wrote a book on his experiences with near-death.
He was in a coma for over a week and he did not have any brain activity, but he had these
vivid experiences while he was having his near-death experience.
Question: Andy, besides nde's is there any scientific evidence for the afterlife?
Dr. Doan: Well, okay there is scientific evidence of multiple universes. Have you heard of that?
Multi-verses. There are physicists that theorize that there are multiple, parallel universes
in parallel with each other. So as a Christian, I look at that and say that's there evidence
for a spiritual realm, you can call it anything you want, you can call it a multi-verse or
call it this earth, Heaven and Hell. So yes there is evidence for a multi-verse but whatever
nomenclature you may pick I think this is evidence for a spiritual realm.
Question: How do you know these out of body experiences are not simply lucid dreams?
Answer: Many of near-death experiences occur when the EEG show no activity. When dreaming,
the EEG needles are very activity and move up and down.. up and down. Alot of these NDE
experiences are when the brain activity is not flatlined... not functioning.
Question: If a person undergoes a NDE and experience euphoria, would an MRI of the brain
during said NDE show said euphoria, e.g. Serotonin?
Dr. Doan: Someone is really smart and knows about the catecholamine system, serotonin,
dopamine, and norephinephrine. Someone is a psychology major and this is a really good
question. It's difficult to answer that because people don't run NDE cases to a fMRI scanner.
I would say yes because recent studies have shown that if people eat an Oreo Cookie, your
serotonin and dopamine pathways are released like you're on crack ***. I would not
be surprised because without the catecholamines and serotonin, we wouldn't function as a human
being, we wouldn't procreate, we wouldn't seek college degrees, we wouldn't seek shelter
and we wouldn't eat. So yes I bet you the brain would light up if these patients came
back euphoric and light up in the same areas of the brain pleasure centers.
Question: Were the NDEs where people experiences warmness and heaven accounts of people who
were Christian? Or were they of another religion or no religion.
Dr. Doan: It seems that it doesn't matter. Regardless of these people being Christian
or not, they describe similar experiences. But I don't think that these NDE experiences
they're describing, from what I understand, are the final entry to Heaven but rather the
experience of judgement where we come face-to-face with God before the final decision. Regardless
of religion, we all have that tunnel experience and that's why I warn people that you have
to be careful which being of light you worship. Like I said Satan can be a being of light
and being very charismatic and described in the Bible as being very attractive. He is
one of the most powerful angels who fell away from Heaven.
Question: You said the kid from Heave is For Real saw Jesus the same way the painter did
in her dream. Was Jesus described this way in other NDE accounts?
Dr. Doan: That's a good question, but I didn't look at all the 1300 hundred accounts from
Dr. Long's study to see if they described Jesus that way. What is amazing is that when
they looked at photos in the book, they pointed out that one photo painted by the girl. They
didn't know the girl, who was from Idaho. The family from Idaho processed the little
that drew that picture. When I did the research, I found it fascinating that little girl was
able to draw the same Jesus the little boy saw.
Question:Does anyone have an NDE where they experience what we would constitute as hell?
Dr. Doan: Yea, there are NDE experiences where people experience hell and they come back
on fire to go the other way. So yes, they describe that their experiences are very vivid
and all their senses are just intensified. And so it's very real to them and scary and
it's usually the atheists who go there and then come back. It's fascinating that, mind
you, that some people come back and worship another religion and that they believe that
the pick the right theology. As for me, I will pick Christianity and know where I will
go. But not everyone becomes a Christian after these experiences, so people still have free
will and make their own choices. I am just throwing it out that they people should know
what choices you are making based on the evidence and all the things we have looked at.
Question: Also, are you victim of skepticism/disdain from the primarily atheist scientific community
and how do you deal with it?
Dr. Doan:You know, we approach it in Love, Authority and Confidence. Like I said be bright
lamp. What the Christian body needs are people to strengthen each others' faiths and people
with different knowledge and experiences that can actually help. So when I share my knowledge
with you, I hope to strengthen your faith so that you can go to the atheist community
and so, you don't have to believe but I will still love you like Christ asked me too and
love my enemies. But keep in mind that when you live out your life and they look at you,
they will ask why you have so much confidence, why you have so much authority in your life,
and therefore I want something like that. You will bear the fruit of the spirit like
peace, love, joy, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and that comes through Faith in a real God.
You know my mom is a Buddhist monk and I am praying for her and loving her, and something
that I came to realization that there is this 76 year old Buddhist monk that I can only
love her without expecting anything in return. And hopefully through my actions she will
be able to see the love of Jesus in me and then accept Him possibly latter down the road.
But that's between my mom and God. I can't force her. You know it's like bringing a horse
to water but you cannot force the horse to drink. So we really don't do the Christian
body any service arguing with atheists and agnostics and try to beat down. We just throw
the data out there and discuss it, like I said, in authority, confidence and love. And
let God do the rest. Someone plants the seeds, someone else does the watering, and He does
the harvest. Amen?!